Air

Joseph Mallord William Turner / The Thames above Waterloo Bridge c.1830–35 / Collection: Tate The word ‘atmosphere’ comes from the Greek atmósfaira , which stems from the root of two words: atmos , meaning steam or vapour, and spharia , meaning sphere or globe. Our Earth is the only planet known to have an atmosphere that supports life as we know it. It is precious and makes the Earth unique. Now take a deep breath. It feels good, doesn’t it? It feels like freedom. It feels like power. It feels full of energy — to the point that you want to dance! But you don’t feel the air that is feeding your lungs. You don’t think about the air in each breath, unless you have a respiratory condition, or the fact that if there was no air to take the next breath and the next, in a few minutes you would no longer be alive. There is nothing else from our external environment that we take into our bodies — water or food — without which we would not be alive for more than a few minutes. On the horizon, to the west, you see silhouettes of tall gum trees, with some wispy white cirrus clouds above them. The scene is so beautiful that you grab your phone and take a photo. And another one, from a different angle. I cannot resist doing this every time I visit Mount Coot-tha; different light, different colours, different ambience; since I was a child in Poland and got a camera, I couldn’t resist photographing the beauty of nature. If you were a painter, you would paint all this, including a flock of white cockatoos — they pass by fast, making a deafening noise, flapping their wings on the way to a destination known only to them. There is also a shining plane gliding down to land at Brisbane airport. Where is it coming from: a distant land or a city not far away? Thinking about these places and destinations, or admiring the graceful movement of wings, for a moment, you do not wonder how these heavy objects (that should fall down due to gravity) fly so high and so far. It is the air supporting their wings when they move that keeps them afloat. Come on a different day, though, or close your eyes and imagine a different scene. The air is still. You can no longer see the island or the mountains on the horizon, and the buildings in the city centre are engulfed in a brownish stratum, stretching all around, as far as you can see. Smog! It could be considered beautiful in one sense, as in the nineteenth-century London experience that inspired Joseph Mallord William Turner to create some of his best-known masterpieces, including The Thames above Waterloo Bridge c.1830–35. You will likely also take a photo of this smog-filled vista: but is it beauty you are capturing or are you documenting an altered environment, making a record of air pollution? The environment and air of the city are affected by emissions from the hundreds of thousands of cars traversing the roads of south-east Queensland every day, and by the emissions of those giant, human-made ‘birds’ — the planes, gracefully crisscrossing the sky over the city before landing or after take-off. The air is also affected by industrial emissions, by power generation, and by excavation in city quarries. Did you ever wonder how many different pollutants are emitted from the exhaust pipe of your car? Several thousand! It is now 70 years since the infamous London smog accelerated the death of thousands of people in December 1952, and which a century before inspired Turner to document it. 2 Pollution from emissions into the air, from the activities that power our society, still kill people, and make us sick every day. 3 And artists continue to be inspired to document it. 2 Michelle L Bell, Devra L Davis, and Tony Fletcher, ‘A retrospective assessment of mortality from the London smog episode of 1952: The role of influenza and pollution’, Environmental Health Perspectives , vol.112, no.1, January 2004, pp.6–8. 3 ‘Air pollution’, World Health Organization , <who.int/health-topics/ air-pollution#tab=tab_1>, viewed July 2022. 67 66 Our air Our air